closed post: in the eye of the beholder

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally's had a lot on her mind since the death and the wedding. Life, love, the fragility of those things--but, of course, she is who she is, so her mind comes back to what it always does: beauty.

As much as she'd judged that strange man for his disheveled robes, everyone else had looked gorgeous, and happier than she'd ever seen a room full of pretties look. Most notably, they'd all looked legitimately different from each other, in just about every way possible. That the effect was beautiful instead of overwhelming is a new experience for Tally.

Tally feels like she knows what Claudius might say about the wedding. He'd heap effusive praise on everyone, and tell her that of course he wanted everyone to be uniquely themselves. She thinks he understands the halo effect better than anyone else she knows here, but also, as a former pre-Rusty king, understands how to deal with a crowd of adult uglies. Galahad, though, has never been someone Tally could guess at the thoughts of. He'd clearly been too happily overwhelmed to really talk at the ceremony itself, so she goes to knock on his door a few days later.

Comments

[onthewillowsthere]

It's a sentiment Galahad agrees with -- he worries about Claudius, even with all of Claudius' friends and lovers, even with Lan Wangji as his brother. Claudius has spent a long time believing that he's not worth being cared for, pretending not to feel the things he feels, using his alchemy to hurt himself. Galahad doesn't mind that Claudius has other lovers, but he's fiercely glad that Claudius doesn't have to share him with anyone, that he's always waiting for Claudius when he comes home. He's good at waiting.

"Thank you."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Claudius's bachelor party was also fun," Tally says. "What was your party like?"

[onthewillowsthere]

After Claudius' party, he'd come home so, so drunk, and so happy -- Galahad was already in bed, but he awoke at once at the way Claudius came through the door, singing snatches of verse from Navarre, and collapsed into the chair at the vanity. Galahad rose to attend to him. He knows Claudius' routine by heart, but he didn't go through all of it; just enough to clean all the makeup from Claudius' skin and apply his nightly moisturizer. "I told Crowley I love him," Claudius said, happy and proud, as Galahad helped him undress, and Galahad was happy and proud too.

"Shen Yuan built a Lego garden with me," he tells Tally.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Really? Like as a ghost?" Tally'd had no idea Shen Yuan could do stuff like that. "Also, what's a Lego? A type of plant?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"His spirit. Lego are a building material for constructing facsimiles of things. Like flowers, or places."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Oh, so like a littlie toy," says Tally, getting it. "Okay. And he could like, pick them up? With his spirit?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"He put his spirit into a Lego man. I have it on my desk," glancing away from her face to his bedside table, where, in fact, Shen Yuan's minifig remains.

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally looks, too. "Oh, it's Rusty plastic." She's totally seen pictures of these things in the big, horrible Rusty landfills they used to have, and it gives her anxiety for a moment. Does Galahad know how long it would take that to biodegrade? But no, that's not what matters here. How is she thinking about landfills when she's learning about real-life ghosts? "It's kind of cute," she says, because it is.

[onthewillowsthere]

"It is," gravely. "Shen Yuan is cute." He's quiet for a moment or two, and then says, "I miss him. I know he was at our wedding, but it didn't feel the same."

[tallyyoungblood]

"I miss him too. I didn't get to hang out with him that much, but he's really nice." If a little possessive of his boyfriend, but Tally can't act like she doesn't get the same way sometimes. "I'd like to get to know him better when he comes back. Maybe we can all three hang out."

[onthewillowsthere]

"He helped me speak with Claudius when I didn't know how to, and gave me an herb as well." He's back to applying cosmetic. "We wrote love letters together and he taught me to play Smash and Jenga. He knows a lot of things. He's kind."

[tallyyoungblood]

"What do you mean, an herb?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Cannabis sativa. It's an herb that makes speaking easier. It makes things feel light."

[tallyyoungblood]

"You mean, like, weed?" Tally starts laughing and has to draw back from Galahad's hands to not ruin his work. "That's--wow."

[onthewillowsthere]

"What?" Magnus had reacted that way, too, when Galahad first told him.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Shen Yuan just doesn't seem like a guy who likes getting high, that's all," Tally says. Weed is, of course, commonly available for pretties, though Tally's clique had mostly been into alcohol instead. Tally most associates it with Hot Airs, the clique who likes to float aimlessly around in balloons.

[onthewillowsthere]

"He did it so he could speak to Luo Binghe, and then he offered it to me as well." He doesn't like speaking of Luo Binghe, but it's hard to discern the displeasure in his tone for someone who hasn't made a study of him.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Lowering your inhibitions," Tally says. "I guess I get that. It makes you kind of pretty-minded."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Is that how your brain damage feels?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Yes, like being high or drunk, but forever. Of course it kind of feels good, and you can talk to people more easily, but you can't think. For a long time I felt like being pretty-minded was like falling asleep, and I was always tired."

[onthewillowsthere]

It's an unpleasant thought. As much as he appreciated both the experiences of being medicated and being drunk, the idea of being that way all the time is viscerally unsettling. "What is it like now?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"I still feel that way sometimes right when I wake up," Tally says. "But, um... less." Much less, if Gideon's there to kiss her good morning. Sometimes even just the thought of Gideon banishes any remaining fuzziness, but that does not feel like something Galahad has to know. "Or, you know, if I get drunk. Or if I let too long go by without doing anything bubbly. But I'm mostly normal now. At least, I think. It's kind of hard to remember exactly what I used to be like before my operation. Like, I remember it, but memories aren't like pictures or videos, you know? They shift. Especially when someone's already been in there messing with them."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes," quietly. "I know." He's thinking of Aornis, certainly, but also of being Damien and Laurel, of the incomparable frustration of knowing there was something missing. A speckled band. A kindness extended to him and perhaps no one else. He doesn't know whether that means it was a joke, the kind of trick from the nightmare she'd sent him (a cruelty disguised as a kindness, not unlike God's favor), or whether he was beneath her notice and only sometimes approached too close to the fight she was trying to have and was struck unintentionally. He can't even remember her face without looking at the picture in his sketchbook.

He's visited her graveside twice now to to try to sort through his thoughts, but they're still tangled, the threads unspooled and snarled together.

[tallyyoungblood]

"I guess you all get to join my bogus memory-altered clique," she says, picking up on the serious vibe. "At least Aornis could do it without surgery. Brain surge was, like, so tiring."

[onthewillowsthere]

"It wasn't just Aornis," he says, fingerspelling her name out of habit. "What is brain surge?"